God Bless America

I am not particularly patriotic. I have never flown the US flag outside my home, or even had a flag sticker in my window. I have never teared up while listening to the national anthem. But I am, here and now, declaring my true love and devotion to America for one very simple reason: ease of online airline booking. Yes, in the past few weeks I have come to know how the websites/call centers of several other countries' airlines operate, and I am happy to say that US airlines rein supreme, for you can be sure that when you finish your transaction online, that a booking has, in fact, been made. Below are a few of my tales of woe.

Air Deccan - By far the worst of all my online experiences, due to recent credit card fraud in India, Air Deccan does not accept any foreign credit card bookings on their site. After calling several US-based travel agents I quickly discovered that none book Air Deccan, and thus went to my last resort: emailing an Indian friend from college to see if he knew anyone who had an Indian credit card and could help me. Turns out he did, and his friend Raj - my knight in shining armor - was so generous as to book the flight for me, using his local credit card, from Mumbai where he lives and works. Total time to book flight, including a call to Bangalore to talk to an Air Deccan representative, as well as calls to travel agents, and emails exchanged with Raj: 10 days.

South African Airways - SAA's website makes you specify a country of residence when you start out, and from that information, only offers departure cities from within that country. So, in an attempt to book a flight from Tanzania to South Africa I had to select "Africa" as my country (yes, I know, it is not a country, but that is the only option on their country list aside from "South Africa" for the continent). Then, after I put in my departure and arrival cities, my flight was not only quoted in Tanzanian shillings, but my only payment option was to go into an SAA office in Tanzania within 72 hours. Well, I don't live in Tanzania, so I had to call the SAA helpline in Johannesburg and talk with the very friendly representative who was able to book my flight over the phone. The next day, I received an email requesting me to call back as my credit card had not gone through. Upon calling, I learned that the reason the transaction didn't go through was that it takes a few days for flights quoted in US dollars to be converted to Rand, but I was "in the queue" for my card to be charged and I should call back in a few days to make sure the transaction had gone through (no, they could not send me a confirmation email). So, today, from Belgium, I called them back to confirm. Total time to book flight: 5 days.

LAN - After completing what I thought was a successful online booking in one go, I was about to give Chilean airlines a thumbs up. But, it was too good to be true, and the next day I received a phone call with, again, credit card processing troubles. This reservation had been made with Dave's card so I wasn't able to answer the questions the woman was asking me so I had to give her Dave's number, which she called a bit later and he was able to sort things out. Total time to book flight: 2 days.

TAM - Nothing in Brazil is ever simple and using TAM frequent flier miles, I've learned, is not worth the trouble. Forget "online" all together as you cannot book a flight with miles on TAM online. So, I called the toll free number and the very nice man who helped me found the right flights for me and took all my information. Just when I was about to wrap things up, he informs me that my reservation will only be good for three months. Well, seeing as I was booking a flight in March '08 and it's only August '07, I wish he had told me this earlier. He assures me that it's fine, I just need to call back in early October and extend my reservation another three months. I must keep doing this every three months until I am less than three months away from the flight time. Then, will they book the ticket for me automatically, no. I must go to a TAM store (conveniently located all over Sao Paulo) and have the ticket issued in person. Then, and only then, can I choose seats. Total time to book flight: months.

For the record, I have used the websites of American Airlines, United, and Delta to book many a flight and from those experiences, average total time to book a flight: less than 10 minutes.